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The Present State of 

Historical Writing 

in America 



1. By J. FRANKLIN JAMESON 
II. By JOHN BACH McMASTER 
III. BY EDWARD CHANNING 



Reprinted from the Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society 

FOR October, 1910 



WORCESTER, MASSACHUSETTS 

THE DAVIS PRESS 

1910 



A ■ 



IN EXCHANK 










■i^,: 



THE PRESENT STATE OF HISTORICAL 
WRITING IN AMERICA. 

I. 

BY J. FRANKLIN JAMESON. 



The Present State of Historical Writing in America 
is a large subject. It is natural, when this Society 
stands so near to the hundredth anniversary of its foun- 
dation and is upon the threshold of a new building and, 
as we all hope, of a new stage in its activities, that the 
President should wish to mark the transition from the 
old conditions to the new by a thoughtful consideration 
of the actual status in America of that study to which 
the Society is dedicated. Such thought may enable 
us to enter upon the new era with a full consciousness 
of the setting in which this organization is to play its 
part, the terrain in which it is to manoeuvre. The 
metaphors imply that the Society is not to drift, but 
to make a conscious and deliberate effort to relate its 
activities to the present status of historical science in 
this nation, and by such effort to advance that status. 
Yet how many difficult questions must be answered 
before we can fully describe this present condition of 
things, this stage of advancement which it is so impor- 
tant for us to understand ! Merely to enumerate some 
of them may be somewhat profitable and impressive, 
but it will be obvious that no one brief paper can go far 
toward making real to us the whole circle of what we 
think to survey. What stage of progress have we 
reached in the accumulation of printed materials for 
history in our libraries, or of unprinted materials in 
our archives? How largely have the latter been reduced 
to order and made ready for the use of scholars? How 



4 

much have we done in the pubHcation of documentary 
materials, what remains undone, and how well are we 
doing such work? What is the quantity and what the 
quality of our output of historical monographs? What 
is upon the average the mental caUbre and what the 
training of those who make them? How do we stand 
with respect to the pubHcation of histories of a higher 
order, marked by literary sense or the effort to general- 
ize? How deep or how copious is American thought 
on the theoretical or philosophical aspects of history? 
How largely have our historical workers pursued, or 
appreciated, or been affected by, the advances made in 
the many other sciences to which history is more or 
less related? What are the present purposes, nature, 
and effects of American historical teaching, elementary, 
secondary, collegiate, or university, which after all 
represents far more than nine-tenths of the total effort 
expended on history in this country? In our universi- 
ties, what is the status of research? How are our his- 
torical societies and journals performing their functions? 
What is the character of those books of history which 
most hold the public attention — so far as the public 
attention can be said to be held by any books whatever? 
What sort or quality of history is presented to the popu- 
lar mind in the ten-cent magazines and the newspapers, 
which now constitute almost the sole reading-matter 
of American mankind? 

Not one of these questions is easy to answer, yet all 
must be answered before we can adequately picture to 
ourselves the present state of historical writing in the 
United States. It is vain to make any attempt this 
morning to pursue them all, but it may not be vain to 
have enumerated them; for if then we perforce narrow 
the scope of the present paper to a consideration of a 
manageable portion of the whole field, we shall neverthe- 
less do this with some consciousness of the relation which 
that portion bears to the whole unmanageable total. 

In selecting a part of the field, it is natural for me to 
think of that which is represented by organized activi- 



ties in the pursuit of history, partly because I have been 
for some years occupied with a corner of that lesser 
portion, rather than with literary histories, and have no 
doubt that 

My nature is subdued 
To what it works in, like the dyer's hand ; 

and partly because it is much easier to make general 
and summary statements concerning the results of 
organized historical work than concerning those more 
various and literary activities and products which spring 
from the free spirit of the individual historical worker. 
We can apply the pedometer and the stop-watch to 
Pegasus in harness much more easily than to Pegasus 
in spontaneous aviation. 

How then do we Americans stand with respect to 
organized historical work? The question may be 
answered by comparison with our status at some period 
in the past, by comparison with the stage of progress 
exhibited by the chief European nations, or by compari- 
son with some ideal which, given our opportunities 
and our resources, we should be expected to have reached. 
It may also be answered by consideration of the various 
forms in which, in any country, historical work is usually 
found organized, the chief typical organizations for the 
pursuit of our study. If we choose to subdivide and 
classify, we may speak of the historical work of govern- 
ments, of societies, of professional journals, of universi- 
ties and colleges, and of co-operative organizations 
formed for the production of a given work. At all events 
these have been in this country the most significant 
forms in which historical work has been organized. 

Intelhgent democratic governments will usually show 
more tendency to subsidize such publications as make 
immediate appeal to the mass of mankind, such as will 
rapidly inform or educate great numbers of readers, 
than such as make their appeal to the few, teach the 
teachers of teachers, or lay secure foundations, far 
below the surface, for the best work of future generations. 
Relatively to the resources of the country, our federal 



6 

government turned out better historical work seventy- 
years ago, in the days of President Sparks's volumes and 
the foHo "American State Papers," than it has in more 
recent years, when it has become more perfectly demo- 
cratic. But never did any government in the world's 
history pour forth such a mass of information regarding 
any great series of events, nor scatter the volumes of 
information so freely, as did our government in the case 
of the 128 volumes of the ''Official Records of the War 
of the Rebelhon. " It is hardly less characteristic that 
our government historical volumes, whether well or 
ill executed, have been brought out casually and sporad- 
ically, with no previous and expert effort to form a 
comprehensive and systematic plan. A clerk of a 
committee thinks it would be an excellent thing to have 
a compilation of documents on the history of a given 
matter, and that he is the ideal man to prepare it. He 
readily persuades his chairman, the chairman somewhat 
less readily persuades the committee, the committee 
perhaps persuades Congress, and we have one more 
historical ''pub. doc," possibly in several volumes, 
possibly worth having, but very likely not half so useful 
to the cause of history as twenty other compilations 
that could be suggested. Efforts to improve this course 
of procedure, to provide the government with a steady 
supply of expert advice on documentary historical 
publications, are under way, and a bill is before Congress, 
but its fate is of course by no means certain. Under 
the present system, or want of system, in selecting what 
shall be done and who shall do it, our government's 
historical pubhcations are, on the average, not only far 
inferior to those of Great Britain, France, Germany, 
and Austria, but even to those of small countries like 
Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Denmark. 
In respect to our State governments, a various tale 
is to be told. Many of our newer states, in the West 
and South, are putting forth most creditable work, 
worthy of being compared with what countries of 
equal population and resources in Europe accomplish. 



Examples are Wisconsin, — a commonwealth having per- 
haps the most enlightened and progressive government 
in the United States, — Iowa, Illinois, North CaroUna, 
and Virginia. These States and some others have put 
their historical work into the hands of persons who 
know not only how such things should be done, but also 
what is worth doing, facing with fresh and open minds 
the question. What has been really important in the 
development, social, economic, and political, of a nine- 
teenth-century democratic community? Most of the 
older and richer State governments of the northeast, 
on the other hand, have steadily maintained antiquated 
and conventional views as to what is worth while in 
documentary historical publication. That of Massa- 
chusetts has for fifty years displayed the most astonish- 
ing indifference to her history, publishing almost nothing 
out of the rich stores of her archives, in a period in which 
a dozen American States and nearly a dozen European 
countries have revolutionized the writing of their his- 
tories by extended and judicious publication of fresh 
original materials. Other of the eastern States have 
continued to putter with muster-rolls and the mihtary 
records of wars already well known, quite as if no breath 
of new life had swept across the historical field since the 
early days of Victoria and Van Buren. Here again 
a defective organization is frequent, while in the West 
and South large results have been derived by either one 
of two excellent modern systems, that of the state-sup- 
ported historical society, best exemplified in Wisconsin, 
or that of the state historical commission or department, 
exemphfied by North Carolina and Mississippi. 

On the whole it is our historical societies that have 
made the largest gains in productivity during the last 
twenty-five years. The number of those which are 
in active existence is very great, probably more than 
two hundred, a far larger number than those of Great 
Britain, and perhaps as large as that of the strictly 
historical societies of France or of Germany. The 
number of members is still more impressive. There are 



8 

ten thousand members of historical societies reported 
in Pennsylvania alone. The pecuniary resources of 
these societies are also great. No doubt they form 
the richest body of such societies in the world. Their 
buildings are certainly worth in the aggregate as much 
as two million dollars, their libraries more than 
a million, their endowments something between one 
and two miUions. Doubtless the work which they are 
doing, in the way of research and pubhcation, is not 
always in full proportion to their wealth, but it is very 
much better than it was twenty-five years ago. They 
are less inclined to print essays written by their members, 
often discursive or of temporary utility, more inclined 
to print documentary materials, which will have in the 
future the same original value they have at present. 
The number of members sufficiently educated in history 
to insist on good workmanship in the pubhshed products 
of the society has greatly increased. This is especially 
true in the eastern States. The number has also greatly 
increased of those who, having a keen practical eye to 
the uses of history, make or sustain the societies' efforts 
to direct attention toward those elements in state or 
local history which have the highest degree of real 
importance. Such members, persons who see state or 
local history in its broad relations to national history, 
and disregarding tradition take up those topics that 
promise most in the way of fresh and vital instruction, 
are naturally more numerous among the more open- 
minded men of the West. The eastern societies are still 
prone to pursue a certain munber of conventional 
themes — the early voyages, the Indians, the battles 
of the Revolution, the interminable biographies of 
deceased members. They are also, as we should expect, 
little inclined to lift their eyes over their own state 
borders and take broad national views. In five years 
of work in Washington, so circumstanced that I am 
likely to know of historical researches undertaken in 
national archives or library, I have hardly known an 
instance in which the publishing authorities of any 



eastern historical society have set on foot any serious 
researches in those great and rich repositories. Seldom 
indeed do they touch the period since 1783. 

Nevertheless much has been gained. Twenty-five 
years ago the publications of most of our historical societies 
seemed, at least to impatient young minds, hopelessly 
provincial and unscholarly. But we were then just 
at the beginning of a new period in all our historical 
work. The preceding generation had felt the influence 
of the best European standards in the domain of his- 
torical literature, ours was to feel it in the domain of 
historical criticism. Prescott and Motley were of the 
school of Thierry and Mignet, Bancroft a disciple of 
Heeren; we were to be followers of Ranke. A generation 
of criticism of sources could not fail to have its effect 
on societies largely devoted to their publication. Exact- 
ness of text, minute care in annotation, adequate atten- 
tion to bibliography, elaborateness of indexing, char- 
acterize the volumes put forth by most of our historical 
societies, even though sometimes they are applied to 
materials of trivial importance, hardly worth the pains 
expended upon them. 

Besides this improvement in method on the part of 
our state and local historical societies, we are to note 
the growth in recent years of many historical organiza- 
tions whose scope is national. Foremost among these 
is the American Historical Association, founded in 1884, 
and already the largest, and presumably the most 
useful, historical society in the world. Others, while 
not limited geographically in their scope, are devoted 
to the American history of a single religious denomina- 
tion. It is noteworthy that the American Jewish His- 
torical Society and the corresponding Catholic organiza- 
tion have been much more fruitful of good works than 
the historical societies founded in the various Protestant 
bodies, which have hardly awakened to the value and 
interest attaching to American religious history. 

Another interesting growth of recent years is the 
group of organizations devoted to the history of the 



10 

various ethnic elements which have entered into the 
population of the United States^ — such as the German 
American Historical Society, the excellent Swedish 
Colonial Society, and that larger association for Scan- 
dinavian-American history which seems now to be in 
process of formation. No one who appreciates how 
important it is to the American life of these newer 
elements that they should remember and respect the 
culture they brought with them, can fail to regard these 
as among the most useful of our historical societies. 
Useful to their members, they are capable of being 
doubly useful to the rest of us, who are prone constantly 
and enormously to underestimate all but the English 
element in American development, prone to take the 
view assumed by the London paper of August, 1909, 
which thanked Heaven that the North Pole, though 
unhappily not discovered by an Englishman, had yet 
been discovered by an Anglo-Saxon — meaning the 
celebrated Dr. Cook, geboren Koch! 

In our survey, then, of the present state of historical 
writing among us, we may look with legitimate com- 
placency upon the stage of development which our 
historical societies have attained. It is true that there 
are at least forty historical societies in Europe which 
are doing work of a grade hardly attained by more than 
two or three of ours. It is disquieting that in so rich 
a country there should not be a larger number of well- 
to-do amateurs engaged in the work of these societies, 
which normally would attract the interest of well-to-do 
amateurs in a very high degree — so at least one would 
expect, and so it has been in other countries and pe- 
riods. But the disinclination of the American rich to 
intellectual production is evinced in many another field, 
and at all events the outlook for our societies is in most 
ways encouraging. 

Of our historical jom-nals most of the same things 
are to be said which have been said of the societies. 
Nearly all of them, indeed, are organs of particular 
societies, and cannot be expected to rise in quality, or 



11 

in influence upon other historical work, above the grade 
fixed for them by the quahties of the societies from which 
they spring. I may be permitted to say much the same 
of the general organ of the profession, the "American 
Historical Review." Without denying or palliating 
faults in the editing, one may safely say in general 
terms that it is about what the status of historical 
science among us permits it to be. Its chief articles 
seem to me to compare favorably with those in some 
of the better sort of European journals. Its reviews 
of books are inferior. In the first place, we have not de- 
veloped so large a class of persons who, whether they 
themselves write or not, are accomplished judges of 
what historical books should be. In the second place, 
there are many subjects or fields, especially in European 
history, in which no American has acquired a large 
amount of expert knowledge, partly because our remote- 
ness from European archives and libraries has made it 
a difficult matter to acquire such familiarity, except in 
fields for which the sources have to a great extent 
already been published. Finally, there is the well- 
known excess of our national amiability, heightened in 
the case of the historical profession by the friendly and 
truly fraternal feelings which frequent meetings in the 
sessions of the American Historical Association, and 
frequent participation in common tasks for its service, 
have engendered. It is a beautiful trait, rooted in 
benign conditions of social development, but it stands 
in the way of incisive criticism. I should be sorry to 
see our Gelehrten speaking of each other as the Germans 
still sometimes do, but if they would be more rigid in 
their standards and more plain-spoken in their criti- 
cisms, they would do more to improve American work. 
When we come to speak of the American universities 
as part of our machinery for historical production, it 
is impossible to repress a certain feeling of disappoint- 
ment. Thirty years ago, when the Johns Hopkins 
University was beginning its extraordinary mission 
in the higher education, and graduate work in the 



12 

United States was in its infancy, we all felt that a his- 
torical professor had it as one of his normal functions 
to produce historical books at frequent intervals, and 
that the young man whom he was training in the prepa- 
ration of a doctoral dissertation was, in the normal case, 
producing simply the first in a long series of historical 
monographs. Time and the vast hordes of youths 
eager to acquire collegiate education (or of parents eager 
to pay for it) have somewhat undeceived us. The truth 
is, that more than half of our historical professors do 
not produce anything at all, and most of the others 
produce only very slowly: and the doctoral dissertation, 
instead of being the first in a long series of Arbeiten, has 
been in more than nine cases out of ten, by actual 
calculation, the young man's sole and last contribution 
to his science. Doubtless the prime duty of a college 
teacher is to teach, and the multitudes clamoring more 
or less actively for historical instruction should receive 
it ; but one cannot resist the wish that the young teacher 
might, like the young oyster, be carried by artificial 
means across that critical period of danger to his Ufe 
which ensues when he is first compelled to go forth into 
a world of pressure and struggle. 

The authorities of universities still appreciate that 
original research is necessary to the mental health of 
professors and to their highest usefulness as teachers, 
and are in some degree aware that, from the point of 
view of the nation at large, it is a pity that so large a 
body of persons specially trained for historical investi- 
gation should be debarred from it ; but there seems to be 
little chance of immediate remedy in the case of most 
teaching professors. Meanwhile, however, some of the 
most enterprising of the western State universities, 
taking a leaf out of their experience in the sustaining 
of agricultural and other scientific research, have begun 
an interesting experiment by the appointment of men 
who are not expected to teach, but to occupy themselves 
with historical researches deemed especially useful to 
the State. Much may be done by such especial foun- 



13 

dations; but it will be remembered that bright expecta- 
tions of the same sort were entertained concerning 
fellowships thirty years ago, when they were first in- 
stalled in our system. 

Last among the forms of organized historical work 
to be considered is the general history produced by 
co-operation. Not unknown in previous centuries, this 
genre of historical composition has especially flourished 
during the last generation. Spain, France, England, 
Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark, Mexico, all 
have furnished excellent examples. Twenty-five years 
ago the United States provided an elaborate one in 
Justin Winsor's "Narrative and Critical History," and 
has not surpassed it since. The merits to be expected 
from such undertakings, in an age of specialization, are 
obvious. As literary products, as efforts toward the 
profounder interpretation of the national life, they are 
sure to suffer from the prescription of uniformity among 
their component parts. They will usually succeed better 
in the summing up of results already achieved by the 
writers of monographs than in the pioneer work of 
developing new thoughts or opening up new fields of 
research. 

In non-literary labors, however, in the plodding 
mechanical work of bringing additional bodies of ma- 
terial to the knowledge of students or making them 
accessible in print, there is a far greater field for co- 
operative endeavor than is commonly realized. This 
is a subject especially deserving the attention of American 
historical societies. We are a nation notoriously apt 
for organization. Our librarians, our scientific men, 
our teachers, have shown conspicuous success in bring- 
ing about valuable results through co-operation. The 
more plastic historical organizations of our western 
States have lately shown their ability to unite by engag- 
ing in a most interesting common task, the making of 
a calendar of all the papers in the French archives relat- 
ing to the history of the Mississippi Valley — a task 
transcending the scope of any one of these organizations, 



14 

yet which would bring almost unlimited duplication 
and waste if each should attempt independently to 
perform its own local part of the whole. The historical 
societies of the East have hitherto shown almost no 
sign of the ability or the wish to co-operate, though it 
would be easy to name a score of undertakings which 
especially invite co-operative labor. To take an imagi- 
nary instance, yet not wholly imaginary, let us suppose 
that one of the New England societies or states possesses 
a part of the essential materials for the study of the 
regime of Andros and Dudley, another society, another 
portion, and so on. Can anyone commend a procedure 
whereby each society, without concert with the others, 
publishes (or neglects to pubhsh) solely the fragments 
of the whole mass which it happens to have in its build- 
ing? Can the historian be well served by the result — 
one part printed on one system in 1850, let us say, another 
part printed on another system in 1900, a third part 
still reposing in manuscript, and all parts treated on 
the basis of the accident of possession? It is but an 
ideal illustration, but the principle is a practical one, of 
frequent application. Situated as the American Anti- 
quarian Society is with respect to the more local his- 
torical societies of the eastern States, it is ardently 
to be hoped that, in the new era opening before it, a 
considerable part of its duty may be felt to be the pro- 
motion of broad-minded and active co-operation among 
its fellow societies. 

The picture I have attempted to draw of the state 
of organized historical work among us is not altogether 
a gratifying one. But I am much attached to that say- 
ing of Bishop Butler, ''Things are as they are, and the 
consequences of them will be what they will be ; why then 
should we deceive ourselves?" I see no occasion in 
these matters to be either optimist or pessimist. Much 
better and more rational than either, is to be a meliorist, 
believing that conditions are improving, doing one's 
part to make them improve. 



15 
11. 

BY JOHN BACH MCMASTER. 

Had some member of our Society, at its first meeting 
nearly a century ago, undertaken to review the state 
of historical writing in our country since the Revolution, 
his task would have been easy. A History of New 
England by Hannah Adams, a couple of works on 
the Revolution by Ramsay, American Annals or Chron- 
ological History of America from its Discovery by 
Abiel Holmes, Marshall's Life of Washington, Minot's 
History of Shays's Rebellion, a View of South Carolina 
by Drayton, and a View of the United States by Tench 
Coxe, a History of Virginia, another of Pennsylvania, 
another of the District of Maine and Minot's Province 
of Massachusetts Bay, would about complete the list. 
Conspicuous by its absence from the list is a class of 
historical works for the production of which the time 
was well fitted. Thirty years had passed since the 
surrender of Yorktown, and two and twenty since Wash- 
ington took the oath of office as first President of the 
United States. That the rebellion of the thirteen colo- 
nies, the fight for independence, the partition of the Brit- 
ish Empire, the desperate struggle for fife which followed 
the Peace of Paris, the adoption of the Constitution, 
and the starting of the little republic on a career of 
astonishing prosperity were events of no common sort 
in the history of mankind was well known to the Fathers. 
Yet none of them thought it worth while to write out 
for posterity a full and truthful narrative of the part 
he played in the founding of a great nation. Some 
five and forty years separate us from the surrender 
at Appomattox ; and our library shelves are loaded with 
books written by those who were conspicuous in the 
struggle for the preservation of the nation. Nothing 
of this sort was done by the men who witnessed the 
Revolution, the fall of the Confederacy and the adop- 
tion of the Constitution. Those who wrote produced 
books of little interest to posterity. We could easily 



16 

spare the Notes on Virginia if the author had devoted 
the hours spent on the composition of it to the writing 
of a monograph on the Framing, Adoption, and Signing 
of the Declaration of Independence, or "My Own Story" 
of his stormy administration. We should be glad to 
exchange, a Defense of the Constitution of Govern- 
ment of the United States of America, for the Personal 
Memoirs of John Adams while a member of the Conti- 
nental Congress, while peace commissioner, minister 
to Holland, and Great Britain, and President of the 
United States. We should much prefer a narrative 
by Monroe of his diplomatic experience in Spain, Eng- 
land and France, to his Examination of the Conduct 
of the Executive. The writing of history in those days 
was little better than a pastime to which gentlemen of 
literary taste might turn from more serious occupations. 
Histories of States, histories of towns were written, but 
no work of wide range and serious importance was 
undertaken till well past the first quarter of the century. 
Meantime the basis for such a work, a great body of 
original material, was slowly being formed. Such His- 
torical Societies as existed, put forth their Collections, 
Transactions, Proceedings, some State papers and public 
documents were printed; biographies of a few of the 
Revolutionary leaders were written, and more than fort}^ 
books of travel, by foreigners and natives in various 
parts of our country, were published. This was a good 
beginning and in the decade which followed 1830, a 
great stride forward was taken. Jared Sparks, our 
pioneer in historical literature, opened it with the Diplo- 
matic Correspondence of the American Revolution. 
Then came his Life of Gouverneur Morris, the series 
known as the Library of American Biography, the Works 
of Franklin, and the Writings of Washington. The 
assaults made by later editors on his methods and his texts 
are well founded. But he deserves to be remembered 
as the first man to ransack the archives of States and 
families at home and abroad in search of the materials 
of our history, and bring together and make accessible 



17 

a vast quantity of papers scattered over the land in 
public and private collections. The decade was notably 
rich in source material. To it belong Irving's Voyages of 
the Companions of Columbus — a companion piece to his 
Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (1828-1831), 
the American Archives of Peter Force, EUiot's Debates in 
the several State Conventions on the Federal Constitu- 
tion, The Life, Correspondence and Papers of John Jay, 
and Gilpin's collection of the papers of Madison. What is 
even more interesting, it was in this decade that the first 
great American historian made his appearance. When 
in 1834, George Bancroft published the first volume of 
a History of the United States, he stepped at once into 
the front ranks of historical writers. His style no longer 
appeals to us. The tone of exaltation, the liberty which 
he took with quotations have often been condemned. 
But his widespread and long continued search for origi- 
nal documents, his accuracy in the statement of facts 
marked him out as a real historian ; and to him belongs 
the honor of having placed the writing of history in 
our country on a high plane of scholarship and of start- 
ing it on an honorable career. His point of view was 
that of the philosophical historian. He analyzes the 
characters of men, and from history, as he narrates it, 
draws lessons of political wisdom. The sociological 
side interested him not at all. The period which he 
covered lacks but three years of three centuries. Yet 
the astonishing changes in manners and customs, which 
separated the Americans who adopted the Constitution 
from the English colonists who founded Jamestown and 
Plymouth, find no place in his pages. 

For a decade and a half Bancroft was without a rival 
in his chosen field. The writers of history were more 
busy than ever. Histories of cities, histories of towns, 
histories of States, mostly worthless, and biographies 
of men great and small came by scores and hundreds 
from the press. Above the mass of busy writers 
there rose a few masters who, thinking the annals of 
their own land too prosaic, sought and found their 



18 

themes elsewhere. Prescott, before 1850, took the read- 
ing pubUc by storm with his Ferdinand and Isabella, 
his Conquest of Mexico, and Conquest of Peru ; and ere 
another decade went around Hildreth had written the his- 
tory of our country from the discovery of the New World 
to 1821, Palfrey was at work on his History of New Eng- 
land, and Motley had made himself famous in the Old 
World and the New by his Rise of the Dutch Republic. 

Thus was it when the Civil War opened ; three of our 
countrymen had produced works so important in their 
subject matter, so broad in scope, so scholarly and so 
well written as to entitle them to a place among the 
world's great writers of history. A fourth who, in the 
opinion of many, has outstripped the three, had opened 
his story of the French in America with the Conspiracy 
of Pontiac. Each one of them belonged to the literary 
and dramatic school of historians. It was by no mere 
accident that Motley began his literary career with 
a novel called Merry-Mount, and Parkman his with 
Vassall Morton. These bespoke their type of mind. 
The things that would interest them in history would 
be, not the great masses of toiling men, not the silent 
revolutions by which nations pass from barbarism to 
civilization, from ignorance to knowledge, from poverty 
to wealth, from feebleness to power, but the striking 
figures of history, great Kings and Queens, the leaders 
of armies, men renowned for statescraft, and the dra- 
matic incidents in the life of nations. Each must have 
his hero and his villain, his plots, conspiracies and bloody 
wars. Just as Froude had his Henry VIII; just as 
Macaulay had William III, Carlyle his Robespierre 
and Cromwell, and Thiers his Napoleon, so Motley had 
his William of Orange and Philip of Spain, Prescott his 
Cortez, Pizzarro, Ferdinand and Isabella, and Parkman 
his Pontiac, Frontenac and La Salle. History as viewed 
by writers of this school is a series of dramas in each 
of which a few great men perform the leading parts 
and use the rest of mankind as their instruments. And 
what could be more dramatic than the periods they 



19 

chose — Spain at the height of her power and glory, the 
Conquest of Mexico and Peru, the struggle of France 
and England for possession of North America, the rend- 
ing of the Empire of Philip II. 

The Conspiracy of Pontiac met with little favor at 
home or abroad. But very different was the reception 
given him when fourteen years later he published the 
Pioneers of France in the New World, and followed at 
intervals of two years by The Jesuits in North America, 
and La Salle, and the Discovery of the Great West. 
These were masterpieces. The incidents were dramatic, 
the characters strongly drawn, the setting of forest and 
prairie, lake and frontier, was picturesque, and the well 
told narrative as interesting as fiction. No finer exam- 
ples of this particular school of history are to be found 
in any language. 

By the close of the sixties much of the early history 
of our country had thus been covered by writers of 
distinction. Irving had told the story of the discovery 
of the new world, Bancroft that of the English colonies 
from their settlement to the Revolution, Parkman that 
of the French in Canada and the Valley of the Missis- 
sippi. But the history of the United States from the 
admission of Missouri where Hildreth left it, was still 
unwritten. The material for history was diligently 
gathered. Biographies, histories of States, recollec- 
tions, memoirs, books and pamphlets on every possible 
phase of slavery and its issues, diaries, compilations 
of the speeches and letters of statesmen, were produced 
in abundance; but no attempt was made to tell the 
story of the last forty years. The march of a people 
across a continent, breaking prairies, clearing farms, 
constructing steamboats, railways, canals, opening 
routes of trade and commerce and building towns and 
cities as they went, and dealing with grave financial, 
industrial, and economic questions with a boldness and 
on a scale nowhere else attempted, furnished none of 
the dramatic incidents which appealed so strongly to 
the historians of the school then in high favor. 



20 

With the close of the Civil War, however, a great change 
began in historical writing. Since that time the history of 
our country has been written and rewritten in the greatest 
detail. Not only does that dreadful struggle mark the 
end of an era in our national life as distinct as that of 
the war for independence, but it also marks the begin- 
ning of a change in our point of view of our history. 
This was manifested in the first place by the eagerness 
with which every scrap of information regarding the 
war has been collected and printed, an eagerness not 
shown by those who took part in the Revolution. 
Scarcely had the smoke of battle cleared away when 
the participants on both sides from the highest to the 
lowest made haste to tell of their part in the war. We 
have histories of particular battles and particular cam- 
paigns, of regiments, brigades, corps and armies, narra- 
tives of life in the prisons, and of escapes from the 
prisons, of blockade runners, of private soldiers; mem- 
oirs, Personal Memoirs, Own Story, by generals and ad- 
mirals on both sides, and of men who filled high places 
in the State. The Federal Government at a cost of sev- 
eral millions has published the official Records of the 
Union and Confederate Armies and Navies, many of the 
States have done the same, and Military Societies have 
been organized to gather and preserve authentic material. 

The interest in our history aroused by the Civil War 
was still further stimulated by the centennials of the 
battles and events of the Revolution, by the founding 
of Patriotic Societies, and by the establishment in our 
Universities and Colleges of chairs of American History. 
The result has been both bad and good. Bad, in that 
it has brought forth books utterly worthless as histories 
and designed to catch the popular interest and enrich 
the publisher. Good, in that it has led to a study of 
our history with a care and detail such as was never 
made before. No part of it has been passed by, and 
much of it has been rewritten. The part covered by 
Bancroft has been traversed in far more attractive 
form by Mr. Fiske, and is now being rewritten in a truly 



21 

scholarly way by Mr. Osgood and Dr. Channing. Mr. 
Schouler has written our history from the close of the 
Revolution to the Civil War, Von Hoist our Constitu- 
tional History to 1861, Justin Winsor edited the Narrative 
and Critical History of America to 1840, Wilson the Rise 
and Fall of the Slave Power in America, Frothingham 
the Rise of the Republic of the United States; and the 
whole story from Columbus to the end of the nineteenth 
century has been told in the American Nation, edited by 
Dr. Hart. Special periods have called forth the remark- 
able histories of Mr. Henry Adams and Mr. Rhodes. 
From the graduate schools of our Universities have come 
year after year monographs of no mean sort. Material 
for the history of our country is collected in no one place. 
A part is in the Old World buried in the archives and 
libraries of England, France and Spain. A part is at 
home scattered over all the land from Maine to Cali- 
fornia in the archives of six and forty states, in a thou- 
sand libraries and in private hands. Travel which a 
search for it entails is costly both in time and money. 
And so great is its bulk that the mere examination of 
it is beyond the span of Hfe allotted to any man. The 
historian who should undertake to write even a century 
of our history, examining every source with the infinite 
care so necessary to a true understanding of every event, 
would assume a task physically impossible to perform. 
To him every well written monograph is a godsend 
indeed; and it should, in fairness to the hundreds of 
young men who have prepared such monographs, be 
said, that they have been exceedingly well done. And 
so, too, has much of the work of our later historians. 
They have found out that war and strife, treaties and 
conventions, the doings of great leaders and the plat- 
forms of great parties do not contribute all that is worth 
noting in the life of a people. They have found out 
that the invention of a labor saving machine, the dis- 
covery of a cure for some dread disease, may really be 
a more important event in the history of a nation than 
any battle its generals ever won, or any treaty its states- 
men ever concluded. 



22 
III. 

BY EDWARD CHANNING. 

History is a mode of thought and expression. His- 
torical writing is the appHcation of the historical method 
to expression with pen and ink. Historical labor finds 
its activities in many directions. It may be grouped 
under three heads: (1) the collecting and printing of 
original sources; (2) the reporting on masses of material 
or on specific topics; (3) historical writing. The first 
two of these groups represent craftsmanship; the third 
division represents art. It is necessary for the eluci- 
dation of the ages to gather documents into storehouses 
and to make them accessible by various modes of arrange- 
ment, by convenient calendars and Usts of one kind 
or another. Some of this material is in printed books; 
another part is composed of original manuscripts. 
Between these two divisions is a series of limited dupli- 
cations by means of transcripts which are made by hand, 
or by the typewriter, or, in a more limited form, by 
photography. Of these the photograph is the best and, 
in view of the great improvements that are being made 
in photography, it might not be amiss to suggest that it 
would be well to postpone or to restrict the duplication 
of manuscripts until the time comes when they can be 
reproduced by the camera. The task of making accessi- 
ble the tools of the historical writer is a necessary part 
of historical labor and those who engage in it deserve 
appreciation and recognition, — they are the altruists of 
the profession, in that they cut themselves off from the 
reputation-making forms of historical endeavor. 

The second class of historical labor presents itself 
to the mind under the words reports, theses, and doctoral 
dissertations. Hundreds and thousands of young men 
and old ones, as well as the middle-aged, all over the 
country are devoting themselves, with the greatest 
assiduity, to the making of extracts and abstracts of 
original sources, arranging them under appropriate 



23 

headings, and translating them into twentieth century 
EngHsh, as ordinarily used in America. These mono- 
graphs, reports, and dissertations, thus laboriously com- 
piled, are issued in the printed form by universities, 
some of which do not confine themselves to the printing 
of works produced within their walls, but take what 
they can get ; others are issued by learned societies under 
the names of transactions, publications, proceedings, 
or collections. Given an adequate amount of material 
and a sufficiency of time, he must be a mediocre man, 
indeed, or one whose brain has become indurated, who 
cannot produce a monograph or volume, or even a series 
of volumes of this type. 

Of recent years, the output of doctoral dissertations 
has greatly increased, owing in part to the establishment 
of a large number of fellowships which are oftentimes 
designated as being for research. The ultimate aim 
of nearly every one of the seekers for doctorates is to 
engage in the teaching of history in a university, a 
college, a normal school, or perchance, in a high school. 
The importance of providing a constant stream of 
youthful, well trained pedagogues is recognized by all, 
and justifies the founding and giving of scholarships 
and fellowships. But we should realize that the pro- 
duction of pedagogues is not the same thing as the bringing 
forth of scholars, much less is it the making of historical 
writers or historians. Professor Jameson has remarked 
upon the barrenness of our doctors. I, too, as a teacher 
of youth, a conductor of doctoral candidates, a guider 
in the evolution of theses, have become conscious of 
the pertinacity with which writers of essays and theses 
in our colleges and universities, whether they get doc- 
toral degrees or not, stop with the work they do under 
direction. Get them out of the university, get them 
away from professorial stimulus, make them teachers, 
make them librarians, and their original work stops. It is 
the most heart-rending thing that university teachers of 
history have to face at the present time. As incitements 
to individualistic, original research, pecuniary aid has 



24 

not as yet proved effective. The man who is going to be 
a great seeker after truth and a fruitful setter-forth 
of the facts of human history to his fellowmen cannot 
be a recluse, living on the scanty bounty of fellowships 
as they have been and are administered by American 
universities. The historical seeker and writer must 
have interests that will compel him to come into con- 
tact with other human beings. The names that occur 
to us of great historical writers, Gibbon, Macaulay, 
Trevelyan, and Lecky in England, Bancroft, Parlonan, 
Irving, Prescott, Motley, and Palfrey in America, are 
not those of closeted students, living on the bounties 
of others. They were all active in pursuits, other than 
those in which they won their fame. In saying this, 
I am referring solely to the production of writers of 
history. Scholarships and fellowships have their justi- 
fication in producing teachers, catalogue-makers and 
other craftsmen; but the artist is not to be thus made. 
The man who has it in him to write a great book will 
do it and do it better if he has to earn his own living, 
and is thereby forced into contact with his fellowmen, 
even if he half starves in the midst of his career. 

The qualifications of the historian are multitudinous. 
He must have training in research, must be able to 
handle material in manuscript and in printed form, and 
to sift the truth from the falsehood. He must have 
the faculty of using the work of others, of recognizing 
first-class monographs at a glance, almost. The ma- 
terials of American history are so vast that the historian, 
even of a fairly limited period, can hardly hope himself 
to read all the original sources. He must use the work 
of others; but he himself must also constantly be using 
original materials; otherwise he will lose the faculty 
of recognition; and he will miss that local color and 
flavor which make historical writing tolerable. The 
task of the historical writer i^ on all fours with that of 
the person who works with colors, — the historian seeks 
to reproduce with the pen the impression his research 
and reading have made on his mind, as the artist seeks 



25 

to reproduce mental impressions with the brush. The 
task of the man who endeavors to state the truth in 
an attractive manner in words is far more difficult than 
that of the novelist or the poet. For the one is hampered 
in every line by the necessity of speaking the truth, 
the other is not. The task of the historian is construc- 
tive, by reproduction to place in public view the record 
of the bygone times. 

With the worker in colors, the novelist, and the poet, 
the historian must possess imagination. He must be 
able to picture to himself in broad outline, the condition 
of a people at a given time, to see the march of armies, 
to recognize the inter-action of economic forces, and 
then to reproduce these impressions with a lightness 
of touch that will make them readable and with a 
heaviness of detail that will make them convincing. 
In his presentation, he must seek to produce a truthful 
impression upon his reader. Oftentimes, to do this he 
must sacrifice absolute accuracy in detail and in per- 
spective. If the impression produced upon his reader 
is truthful, it matters little whether all his dates are 
correct, all his names are properly spelled, or if all 
his facts are accurate. Indeed, his dates may every 
one of them be correct, his names may all be properly 
spelled, his facts may be absolutely accurate, and the 
impression left upon his reader be entirely false. 

The historian must be a person of broad sympathies; 
to be an antiquarian is not enough. He must have some 
sympathy with the ways of the economist and must 
regard the march of fact in the light of the laws of 
human development. Professor MacMaster has rightly 
termed the older historians ''dramatic writers." They 
attributed the Revolution to the Adamses, to Washing- 
ton, to Henry, to Otis, and to the other great men of 
that epoch. Approaching the problem from a more 
modern standpoint, it becomes increasingly evident 
that the separation from England was largely due to 
the play of economic forces. At the same time, there is 
no such thing as economic history; all history is economic. 



26 

All historical development is founded upon industry, 
upon the necessity of supporting life, and the way in 
which it is done. It is impossible to separate economic 
history from political history. None the less, the his- 
torian owes a debt of deepest gratitude to the economist 
for rescuing his subject from the abyss of dramatism. 
The historian must also have enough of training in 
law to be conscious of the way in which lawyers look 
at affairs. He must realize the meaning of the word, 
of the phrase, ''the law." It is true that the historian's 
business and the lawyer's business are very different. 
The qualities of the mind that make a successful his- 
torian are not those that make a successful lawyer; 
but lack of the feeling or the knowledge of how lawyers 
look at certain problems is fatal to the best historical 
production. Similarly, he must have some acquaint- 
ance with that which is termed science; he must under- 
stand the scientific temperament; and must know some- 
thing of the results of scientific inquiry. 

The historical writer must be a master of perspective ; 
he must see events and men in their true relations. He 
must not exalt one period unduly, or give too heavy a 
weight to one set of events ; he must not dilate too much 
on the influence of men and omit to set forth with equal 
skill the influence of underlying forces. This is not 
saying that an historical writer cannot treat a limited 
period or a limited topic or that biography may not be 
one form of historical writing; but within his field, the 
historical writer must see the perspective truly. This 
is one of the most difficult of all achievements for the 
historian, because in his researches, he is likely to come 
upon new material relating to some one part of his studies 
that no one else has ever seen, or rather that no one 
else has ever understood. The temptation is great to 
apportion his space according to the importance of 
his materials, not according to the importance of the 
events or the men. 

The difference between the tasks of those whom I 
have termed historical craftsmen and those whom I 



27 

have called historical writers lies in the amount of think- 
ing necessary for the best production in their respective 
fields. The searching for documents, the copying of 
them accurately, the verifying of texts, and the seeing 
them accurately printed is a work that demands time, 
labor, and patience. The writing of reports or theses 
likewise demands prolonged labor in searching out 
facts, some skill in ascertaining the truth of them, and 
some facility in putting them together. The object 
of these productions, however, is not so much to stim- 
ulate and interest large numbers of readers as to pro- 
vide accurate and painstaking statements of fact for 
the use of university professors and historical writers. 
It is not expected of the monographer that he shall be 
interesting or stimulating, he can be as dry and detailed 
as he pleases. The object of the historian is very 
different and his mode of procedure must be quite unlike 
that of the purveyor of transcripts, the editor of original 
documents, or the writer of monographs. 

The first thing that the historian must do, after he has 
looked over his field carefully, from one end to the other, 
and acquired some knowledge of relative values and 
perspective, is to familiarize himself with the facts. 
It is not enough for him to note down this, that, or the 
other on paper and then from these notes make up his 
text. He must pass all this matter through his brain; 
he must make it a part of himself. To accomplish this, 
he must become very familiar with his facts; he must be 
saturated with detail. He must be on speaking terms, 
so to say, with the men and women who take any leading 
part in his story. He must know, not merely a critical 
year or so, in their lives, he must be acquainted with 
their environment, with their upbringing, with their 
mental and moral qualities. In treating of economic 
problems, he cannot array a mass of facts on paper, he 
must make the facts part of himself; he must ponder 
them carefully, day after day, month after month, possibly 
year after year, until their true relation and interaction 
come to be revealed to him. It is only after this pro- 



28 

longed research, this saturation of self with facts, after 
having gone through these long mental processes, often 
fraught with serious misgivings, that the historian is 
prepared to put pen to paper and try to reveal to others 
that which the past has revealed to him. In writing 
he seeks to tell the story in such a way that his readers 
will become convinced without being aware that they 
are being argued with. In his statements he must be 
careful not to arouse opposition, but to produce the 
effect he desires by the employment of lights and shadows 
precisely as does the artist. He must weigh every 
sentence, nearly every word, with a view to euphony, 
to form, and even to grammar. In all this, he must 
put his own soul into his work and let it shine forth. 
The labor and risk involved in producing even a small 
piece of historical writing is very great. Sometimes, 
the author feels that it would be advisable to stop. It 
is absolutely impossible to write a definitive history. 
Every historian misses or has not access to many, many 
facts and papers. At any moment a document may 
come to light to destroy all statements as to some one 
fact or series of facts; the next historical writer must 
revise the dicta of centuries. An author is always 
prejudiced by his environment; he is limited by the span 
of human existence. He must therefore apportion his 
time so that his chosen task stands a fair chance of 
accomplishment. Nor can he be blamed for closing 
his research and beginning the arrangement of his facts, 
for there is scarcely a field within the purview of the 
writer on American history that would not yield to 
research, if carried on for many, many years, or indefi- 
nitely. The time comes when the historian must begin 
to make up his mind. In doing this it is not at all 
necessary that he should have read every bit of evidence. 
Take the countless diaries and journals of the blockade 
of Boston, or simply those dealing with Bunker Hill; 
there are differences between them, no doubt, but in 
essentials they teach the same truths. These will be 
patent to the man of historical genius when he has read 



29 

three or four of them, and will never become visible to 
him whose mind works in another way, no matter how 
many he may read. 

In looking about for writers of history in this country 
at the present moment, the seeker is met with greater 
discouragement than would befall him in almost any 
other path of original research. The American people 
are in the midst of a cycle of commercialism. There 
has not been a time for many years, at any rate, when 
scholarship has been so lightly valued in the United 
States as it is at the present moment. In talking with 
students, in viewing the books that are printed, one is 
driven to this conclusion, lamentable though it is. 
Scholarship is momentarily at a very low ebb, because 
it is not valued throughout the country at large. Now- 
adays the size of the output and not the quality of the 
production is what attracts attention. The standard- 
ization of education, not the making of scholars, is the 
cry. Let anyone turn the matter over in his own mind 
and see if he cannot count the really first-class works 
of American historical writers within the last twenty- 
five years, on his fingers; and yet conceive of the num- 
ber of persons engaged in historical pursuits and the 
number of books constantly published under the guise 
of history! Some day the wheel will turn around; 
scholarship will again be valued as a national asset; 
and a new Parkman will arise! Possibly, he may 
produce only one volume, but if that volume shall be 
of the quality of the ''Pioneers of France," it will do 
more for the cause of educating the plain people and the 
building up of his own reputation than the printing 
of documents by the ton or the publication of mono- 
graphs by the dozen. 



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